Our warm temps continue and we are are taking full advantage of it. Hubby is home for the week and we are plugging away on our list of "to be completed" projects.
The time has come for Miss Charlotte, our sow to be bred. This is a first for us. We have raised pigs successfully for years but I've never raised a female to keep for breeding. Charlotte has grown into a "BIG" pig and she's a pet. She loves to be scratched and petted. Mr. Pig will be arriving in a week or so. We finished up the honeymoon suite yesterday and moved Charlotte into her new digs.
The inside of our big barn was originally 10x10 box stalls for horses. I haven't had horses for a few years now so we have been slowly revamping the inside to accommodate our other animals. We gave Charlotte a 10x10 stall with a trap door through to the next 10x10 stall for a farrowing stall. We can also move Mr & Mrs Pig from one stall to the other to clean them out. I can open and close the trap door from the outside of the stall. The blue barrel is her source for water. It has a pig nipple on the bottom. She has to push down on the tip of it to release the water into her mouth. It works great and it keeps her accommodations much cleaner. I can also put a small barrel heater in it to keep her water from freezing should it get very cold in the barn this winter.
We are hoping Charlotte settles the first breeding so Mr. Pig doesn't need to stay very long. Gestation for a pig is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days. If all goes well, we will have piglets in April when warm weather is arriving. Our last hatch of guinea keats moved into the junior guinea house yesterday. They are happy to have a place to get outside and scratch around. They will stay here for 8 weeks or so and then move into the big guinea house with all the others. I have a trap door between the two and can just open it to let them merge when it's time.
This handsome fellow is one of our barn cats, Smokey. Lately he has been sitting on the stairs and watching us as we work in the barn. He's not exactly friendly but he's not all that afraid of us either. 
He has plenty of company in the hay mow; I'll post some new pictures of them soon.
4 comments:
I love the pictures! They are wonderful. Good luck on the first breeding, hopefully you have lots of little piglets running around.
As for my son and hunting, his dad and family are big hunters, between my husband and I we have 6 sons, and most of them hunt. Hunting is a big thing with us!
So, cool, piggy stalls:) Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Cool photos of all the animals.
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